were tremendous, though five minutes of the sermon and observation of the refined attitude and gestures of the cultured Frenchman were as much as could be borne without fidgeting. When half an hour had passed, and Père Hyacinthe seemed as far from concluding as when he began, many of the gentlemen could stand it no longer, and left the church-not without contributing something at the door, as counterpoise for their apparent discourtesy. It might be objected by some that the musical part of the Episcopal Church services in Jacksonville are conducted a little too theatrically. A finely-dressed young lady will, for example, sing a solo face to face with the congregation, her music-which she does not look at-held most artistically, and her mouth a studied and elegant oval, while with her eyes she ranges freely over the countenances of the ladies and gentlemen before her. But as this lady is gifted with a sweet voice, and a not unbeautiful face, I, myself, have nothing to say against the exhibition. Everyone follows his or her inclination as to sitting or standing during the service; the rubric is here, verily, a dead letter. But then, it may be said, they are mostly invalids wintering in Jacksonville for their health, and one ought not to be hypercritical in a place of worship. Granted readily, and it is just the piquant combination of a busy, money-making place, with its hotels and boarding-houses full of people who surrender themselves to the sway of whims and fancies, which makes sunny, blue-skied Jacksonville so delightful a wintering-place. It is a place where everyone may follow his bent unrestrainedly, and, if for no other reason than this, deserves to grow in popularity year by year.

PRINCESSES IN THE PAST.

IN TWO PARTS. PART I

Plantagenets, Tudors, and Stuarts, while the sympathetic flutter that thrills the general female bosom is increased by the knowledge that reasons of state are no longer concerned in the matter; and that here, at all events, is a marriage of inclination and not of policy.

We may well contrast this happy marriage, which rather gives the mother a son than takes away a daughter, with other marriages, not so happy perhaps, where royal Princesses have been the bridessometimes unwilling, often indifferent, but rarely, till now, with that full personal regard for their intended mates which is the chief ingredient in a perfect marriage.

We are a long way now from the time when the marriage of a Princess was an affair of general moment, in which every member of the community felt an interestwhen conduits ran with wine, and all the bells of all the churches rang out with merry clangour; when the abbey was hung with crimson and gold, and everyone who came was feasted as of right in the King's hall; when the utmost amount of bluff, hilarious festivity was extracted from the practice of the old popular customs that followed and plagued the blushing bride even into the nuptial chamber. But if the old jollity and fellowship are gone, the cruel indifference is also gone which consigned the Princess, tenderly reared and cared for, to the clutch of some stranger -an unkind and, perhaps, elderly chieftain-to be carried off into strange lands and among unknown peoples, quite irrespective of any will of her own in the matter.

But while serious historians confine their attention to the ruling powers, and do not concern themselves with the joys and sorrows of the younger branches, and while even the writers of lighter and less laborious compilations draw the line at those within direct succession to the throne, the story of the loves and marriages of the younger daughters of the realm still remains unwritten. There are Princesses, indeed, who have altogether escaped notice.

of

in a quite inconsistent celibacy. The spouse might be loving, his hall warm and wellprovided, yet the bride had no thought for the love of human spouse

But kept cold distance, and did thence remove, To spend her living in eternal love.

Or if the woman were not all ice, she was all fire, passion, and revenge, and ready to sheathe a dagger in the heart of rival or of neglectful lover.

would she come to church, but never abide the sacre -or consecration of the Host"and when this was noted of her husband, one day he bade four of his knights that they should hold her to her place through the mass. And this they did; but a little before the sacre she flew from them out of the window, and the children that were on her left hand she bore with her, and the others on her right she left behynde her. King Richard was wont to say, with reference to his strange great-grandmother, that no wonder they that came of such kindred were each contrary to the other"

How many there were of these patient spinsters and embroiderers who clustered about their mother's, stern Matilda's, chair-who can say with certainty, or who can record their fates? Was Gundreda one of them? that daughter of the Conqueror, whose bones were found thirty or forty years ago among the ruins of the once stately abbey of Lewes, which her husband, De Warenne, had founded. Brown, of the Archæological Society, says she was not, and hints at scandals that threw a ray of interest on that distant period; while Jones, of the Antiquarians, is equally certain that she was of the right royal line, and that the numerous descendants she left in private families of more or less distinction are entitled, if not to a quartering, at least to a lozenge, or a label, or some other heraldic device with the lion or leopard of England exhibited thereon.

In those early days, indeed, there was not that rigid adherence to genealogical limits which the policy of the ruling families of Europe has since imposed on its members. William the Conqueror no doubt owed something of the rude force of his nature and the stern common-sense that was his great characteristic, to the lineage of the tanner of Falaise. And the Plantagenets, if tradition is to be credited, inherited the fire of their nature from a still more extraordinary source. The father of Geoffrey Plantagenet wedded a wife, writes an old chronicler, "only for her beauty. He wist not whence she came, nor of what kindred she was. Seldom

the future of himself and kindred, that they were all destined to return to the place whence they had come. Certainly all the Plantagenets had a considerable spice of the presumed maternal ancestry about them-of this Princess of the House of Darkness; but such share as may have fallen to their descendants has been so far mixed and diluted, as no longer to form an objectionable element.

The Plantagenets, it will be remembered, owed their title to the English crown to marriage with a Princess, a titular Empress, indeed, although her first marriage to the Emperor of the period seems to have been more formal than real. Anyhow, the Emperor, it is said, put her away, not for her fault, but from a desire to assume the hermit's cowl. This desire, according to the same monkish tradition, he accomplished in the neighbourhood of Chester, where he occupied the cell left vacant by Harold Infelix.

There are missing Princesses, too, among the daughters of Henry the Second, whose wife, the fair and jealous Eleanor, brought him six noble daughters, of whom only three are fully accounted for. These three, however, established for themselves a footing in history, by marrying Kings or reigning Dukes, the most important being the marriage of Matilda to Henry the Lion, one of the powerful and prolific race of Guelfs, from whom spring our present royal family. The story of a Countess of the house of Guelf, who had as many children as there are days of the year, three of whom were born together in a year of our Lord unknown, may be put aside as a humorous exaggeration. But the son of an English Princess and the Guelf became the first Duke of Brunswick, a title which, after all these centuries of existence, seems likely to be merged in the possessions of the Hohenzollerns.

We are not certain, either, whether all King John's daughters have been duly accounted for. They were children at their much-abused father's death, and the duty of marrying them to good advantage fell upon their brother, Henry the Third, who found a husband for the eldest in the Scotch king, Alexander the Second, while the youngest made a more brilliant, but hardly more fortunate match with the Emperor Frederick the Second. The intermediate daughter pleased herself by marrying a subject, the rising and powerful Earl of Pembroke, to whom, however, the alliance brought only evil fortune. The Barons resented the match extremely. The King had wasted a Princess, by permitting her to marry one of their order, when she might have been utilised in obtaining an ally abroad. Anyhow, the Earl was murdered some two years after his marriage, and his widow bestowed herself in the most hasty and inconsiderate manner upon Simon de Montfort, the famous champion of the aristocratic, as opposed to the royal, party.

Of Henry's own daughters by Eleanor of Provence, the elder married her cousin, Alexander of Scotland, while the younger, whose name, Beatrice, excites some interest in this connection, was bestowed upon John, Duke of Bretagne. This latter was a marriage which seems to have been happy enough during the short time it lasted, but Beatrice, after bringing her husband sundry children, died at an early age.

Another generation now appears, and the little group of Princesses, the children of Edward the First, and his faithful, muchloved wife, Eleanor. Of these only Joan excites our interest-Joan, who was born at Acre, while husband and wife were there crusading for the Holy Land. This young woman had a fair share of the wilful character of the Plantagenets, without their over-weening pride, and after her first marriage, a sufficiently suitable match, with Gilbert, Earl of Gloucester, she married her deceased husband's squire or steward, Ralph Monthemer. Such a thing was then deemed monstrous, unheard-of, that a Princess of the royal house should marry a simple squire, and those about the King proposed to punish the audacious fellow with a traitor's doom. But the stout squire had carried himself so bravely in the Scottish wars that the King forgave him, and we may hope that the pair lived happily ever after. "A ful holy woman was the lady of Acre "-so writes one of the

chroniclers, though his chief reason for the statement was that the body of the Princess was found in a perfect state fifty-two years afterwards. She was buried in the Church of the "Frères Austines" at Clare, in Suffolk, which is, or was recently, used as a barn.

The unhappy Edward the Second had two daughters, the younger of whom was Joan, who was given in marriage by her brother, the third Edward, to David, King of Scotland, and was derisively nicknamed by the Scots, Joan Makerpeace. An honourable title we should think it now, but scarcely so regarded by the Scot of the period. Joan took with her to Scotland, as part of her dower, the regalia of Scotland, still proudly exhibited in Edinburgh Castle, but she did not take back the coronation stone which her brother had promised to restore, but which the English people preferred should remain in Westminster Abbey. But the black cross of Scotland went back, the morsel of the true cross which gave its name originally to Holyrood Abbey, and many other valuable relics. The royal bridegroom was only seven years old, and in spite of her title, Princess Joan could have had little peace in her wedded life. After a long exile in France, the young pair came to their kingdom, and Joan saw her husband taken prisoner at the battle of Neville's Cross, after which he remained a captive for eleven years. Nor did any children come to bless the union, and thus the house of Bruce came to an end, and the Stuarts grasped the uneasy crown of Scotland.

Of the five little Princesses who came to Edward the Third and Philippa, we hear very little. There were plenty of stout sons, who promised to place the Plantagenet race beyond the fear of extinction, and thus the future of the daughters of the house became of less national moment. Their history may be dug in fragments out of wardrobe accounts, or be found lurking in pipe-rolls-here dry bone, as it were, and there a stray lock of hair from once abundant tresses, as when an old tomb is explored, but little else. The heroine of the period is Countess Joan, the fair Maid of Kent, the King's cousin, and the daughter of that Earl of Kent who was treacherously led into the toils of his enemies at Corfe Castle. This royal lady's wedding adventures are rather curious. No longer was the Princess of the period brought up in seclusion and cloistral simplicity. Young Countess Joan, not

over rich-for the Earldom of Kent was worth little more than forty pounds a year, and other possessions had been. escheated-and altogether rather a waif and stray among Princesses, had been brought up in the household of William Montague, Earl of Salisbury. And here she met a fine young fellow, one of the Earl's household, Thomas Holand, of a Lancashire family, not in any way distinguished, who fell deeply in love with fair Joan, and persuaded her to some form of betrothal which the indiscreet young couple persuaded themselves was as good as a formal marriage. Presently Holand was called away to the French wars, where he signalised himself greatly, especially at Cressy, where he had chief command in the van of Prince Edward's army, and while he was away, Joan, who, with her beauty and bonhomie, had a fair share of fickleness and of freedom of manner, was persuaded by the Earl of Salisbury to contract herself to him.

So when Sir Thomas Holand returned with all his honours upon him and full of lover-like ardour, he found his young wife actually the wife of another-and a very powerful other-who decidedly refused to part with her. Sir Thomas, however, appealed to the ecclesiastical courts, and finally to the Pope, who gave judgment in his favour, with restitution of conjugal rights: a judgment in which the Earl finally acquiesced, and Joan, who was ready to be the spoil of the victor, whosoever he might be, returned contented to her first love. Both Holand and the fair Joan were in high favour with the Black Prince, and the former soon had assigned to him sufficient honours and revenues. He was made Lieutenant and Captain-General of the Dukedom of Brittany, with full possession of all the revenues of the duchy, and, afterwards, also Governor of the Channel Islands, with other charges and trusts of importance. Sir Thomas died leaving Joan still young and handsome, and she presently married the Black Prince, who had long been enamoured of his cousin, and, as everybody knows, she became the mother of Richard the Second. Her children by Holand were raised to the highest honours in the English peerage, and scandal of recent days has made free with her character and that of her husband, and attributed the extraordinary favours he received to unworthy causes. But Joan, before she died, gave directions that she should be buried by the side of her first

husband-a silent and potent testimony in her favour as a faithful wife.

With the rise to power of the House of Lancaster, we see traces of a more politic and cunning hand in the disposal of the royal Princesses. They were no longer wasted, but their alliances were made to serve the turns of foreign policy. One of Henry the Fourth's daughters married Louis of Bavaria, the Elector Palatine, and another was sent in one of the King's ships to Denmark, to marry the King, who was but a small youth, and still under his mother's tutelage. But here occurs a considerable hiatus in Princesses. The cruel broils of the Wars of the Roses intervene, and at last we come to a royal PrincessElizabeth, the last direct representative of the House of York-who, in her youth and inexperience, was selected to marry the chilly valetudinarian, King Henry the Seventh.

And now we are at length clear of the Middle Ages, and may walk in the light of full and contemporary records. The old times are finished-the days of great feasts, great jousts, tourneys, "daunsyngs, carolyngs," when a royal wedding was feasted with great joy and triumphs. The pageantry and some of the brilliance of the old régime still continue, an echo of the horn of Roncesvalles; but it is an echo only. The old world has passed away, and brave new creatures walk the earth-lords and ladies in silken attire, and princesses with their splendid trains.

CHRONICLES OF ENGLISH COUNTIES.

MONMOUTHSHIRE.

As we cross the Severn by the steamferry to Portskewet, in Monmouthshire, the names of the shoals which occupy so much of the river-bed, known as Welsh ground and Welsh banks, show that, in popular estimation, the county we are about to enter is really a part of Wales. Indeed, it was not until the reign of Henry the Eighth that Monmouth became -as far as the King's council could make it so- -an English county. Even then the district remained under the jurisdiction of Welsh judges, and the county was actually brought under the English jurisprudence in the time of Charles the Second, when it was united to the Oxford Circuit; while the anomalous and irregular jurisdiction of the Lords Marches was only finally

abolished in the first year of the reign of William and Mary.

The ferry itself is not without historical interest. Here, no doubt, was the Trajectus of the Roman itinerary, and ferry-boats passed to and fro, while the sunshine flashed on the helmets of the Roman legionaries, and glittered on their bright accoutrements. Saxon chiefs, too, in their barbaric bravery, thronged across as they followed their Lord Harold to the wars against the Welsh. Harold himself built a palace at Portskewet, and there enter tained the Confessor when he held his court at Gloucester. And yet, the ferry is called the New Passage!

The New Passage, in fact, owes its name to a strange incident in the Civil Wars. It was towards the close of the contest-Naseby had been fought and lost by the King, who, having found a precarious refuge at Raglan Castle, was moving hither and thither, closely pursued by his enemies that one day the ferrymen were hailed by a horseman, accompanied by two or three attendants, whose horses showed by their condition that they had been ridden far and fast. The boatmen recognised the King, and hastened to get out the great horse-boat, and then ferried across the little cavalcade to the English shore. The tide was low and the channel narrow, the great sandbanks were high and dry; and the boatmen pointed out that time would be saved by landing on the bank called the English stones, whence the King and his suite could ride across to the shore without danger. The King thanked the men, rewarded them royally, and rode away.

Hardly had the ferrymen returned to their station on the Portskewet side, when a troop of Parliament horse, eighteen or so in number, rode up in hot pursuit, and shouted roughly to the men to get ready their boats. The boatmen made difficulties and objections, doing all they could to gain time; but the leader of the band drew his sword, and swore that he would cut them down if they hesitated or made the least delay. The boatmen sullenly drew up their boats, and took on board their unwelcome passengers-thus hot upon the King's trail.

would be running like a millstream between the shoals and the shore. But the ferrymen ran their boat on the English stones, and mutely intimated that now the voyage was ended. There, indeed, on the margin of the now rushing waters were the fresh hoof-marks of the horses of the fugitives. The Roundheads hastily landed, and rode off across the shoal, and the ferrymen pushed off and rowed away.

There is no fiercer tide along all the English shore than that which rushes twice a day up the Severn sea. The wide mouth of the estuary, opening towards the great tidal-wave that swirls across the broad Atlantic, gathers the rush of waters which dash up the narrower throat of the channel with the westerly gale, rising as they go in a bore or wall of waters several feet in height. And thus the fate of the unhappy troopers was quickly sealed-in front of them a swift channel now quite impassable, behind them the foaming tide. There was a shout of rage and despair, a struggle in the foaming waves, and then all was silent, not a man escaping to bear witness to the treachery of the ferrymen.

Such is the story as it was told, when it was safe to tell it; but it seems that at the time, the loss of the detachment was attributed to accident, like the loss of a troop of cavalry in crossing a ford during the Afghan war. So, by the order of General Cromwell, the ferry was abolished as dangerous, and, when it was once more opened, a century or so later, it was called the New Passage.

About here the coast of Monmouth is low and flat, giving little promise of the charming scenery of the interior. These marshes are known as Caldecott and Wentloog levels, and are held against the sea and its tides by walls and banks of ancient date, the whole being kept in order and regulated under the laws of Romney Marsh, the type and model of such amphibious jurisprudence.

Chepstow, with its noble castle welded to the perpendicular cliff that rises from the brink of the river, has many points of